


But You See It's Not Me

by theredspecs



Series: Zombie [1]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Canon-Typical Violence, Fake AH Crew, Gen, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 18:44:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14775129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredspecs/pseuds/theredspecs
Summary: "Are you all right?" Ryan asks.Geoff nods slowly, then stops. He shakes his head."No," he says. He pauses; his frown deepens. "Well, maybe. I remember you. From before you were the Vagabond. I remember you."





	But You See It's Not Me

"Ryan, I’m just saying that if you trust us enough to agree to join the crew, you should probably trust us enough to let us see your bloody face now."

Ryan wants to tell Gavin to fuck off for the fiftieth time, but, to be fair, the Lad has a point. After a year and half of on-hire work with the Fakes, Geoff invited Ryan to join the crew and Ryan – to everyone’s surprise except his own and possibly Jack’s – accepted. Ryan likes the Fakes. He’d liked them from the jump even though he didn’t show it. They’re loud and ridiculous and sometimes Ryan wants to strangle them (specifically Gavin – sometimes he wants to strangle Gavin), but they’re genuinely good people. He does trust them. No one who knows Ryan as the Vagabond has been allowed to see him without his mask or paint, though.

The Fakes have never pushed the issue, but tonight Gavin brought it up and won’t let it go. They’re having an impromptu party to celebrate Ryan’s newly minted status as a member of the crew. Given the situation, Ryan had initially chalked up Gavin’s behavior to alcohol and excitement. It was Gavin being Gavin – he’d lose interest soon enough. However, it’s been a couple of hours now and Gavin has shown no signs of moving on. Meanwhile, Michael has been uncharacteristically quiet. It’s making Ryan suspicious. Finally, he asks the obvious question:

“You two have money riding on this, don’t you?”

Gavin’s eyes go wide – he snaps his head around to look at Michael. Michael just grins.

“We sure do.”

Ryan nods. He doesn’t ask the terms of the bet – he already knows what he needs to know. Gavin always bets in favor of the most outrageous, unreasonable things; therefore, Ryan is positive Gavin is about to lose.

Ryan looks at Gavin and smirks. “Hope you have enough cash on you,” he says as he gets up off the couch and heads to bathroom. Behind him, Ryan hears Michael laugh.

Getting the makeup off is quick work; convincing himself to go back out to the party is another matter. Ryan spends a few minutes looking at himself in the mirror. This is how he looks when he goes grocery shopping, when he goes to the movies, when he gets coffee. It’s not like Ryan hides his face from the world at all times. Showing the crew is different, though. Letting them see this face is letting them put all the pieces together; it’s letting them see him. Ryan hasn't let anyone do that in years and the prospect is terrifying. But it’s like Gavin said: if he trusts them enough to be a Fake, he should trust them enough to show them his face. He takes a breath and heads back to the living room.

There’s a moment of shocked silence when the others see him. Then:

“I told you!” Michael yells. He points at Gavin. “I fucking told you! He is not deformed - his face is completely fucking normal. You owe me $5k, bitch. Pay up.”

After that it’s pure chaos. Wolf whistles and excited squeals and every lewd comment that comes to anyone’s mind.

The only one who doesn’t join in is Geoff. He's got a look on his face that Ryan can't quite read. Ryan doesn’t dwell on it, though – he’s too busy trying to quell the uproar. If Geoff has something to say, he’ll say it when he’s ready.

Later that night, the crew is deep in a Mario Kart tournament. Ryan got knocked out first round. He's standing at the back of the room, laughing as Michael lobs increasingly graphic threats of violence at Gavin. Suddenly, Ryan feels a hand on his shoulder. He looks to his side - it's Geoff.

"C'mon," Geoff says, motioning toward his office.

Ryan nods and follows him.

"Close the door behind you."

Ryan does. When he turns back around, Geoff is sitting on his desk. He’s looking at Ryan hard and frowning. This is odd behavior for Geoff, especially drunk Geoff. It’s starting to make Ryan nervous.

"Are you all right?" Ryan asks.

Geoff nods slowly, then stops. He shakes his head.

"No," he says. He pauses; his frown deepens. "Well, maybe. I remember you. From before you were the Vagabond. I remember you."

Ryan's blood runs cold. That can’t possibly be true. Still, the statement throws him.

"That’s not - no. You - how?" he stammers.

Geoff sighs and scrubs his hands over his face. "It was like... 10 years ago. A little more than that probably. RT took a meeting with this crew in from down South. Georgia, I think."

Savannah, Ryan adds to himself, but doesn't say it out loud. So Geoff does recognize him.

Shit.

Geoff goes on. "These guys were fucking idiots – we're talking mind blowingly stupid. Just dumb fuck good old boys who thought they were gonna walk into our city and throw their weight around. They didn't _have_ any goddamn weight here, but they acted like they did. Stupid. So fucking stupid."

That was a massive understatement. The crew leader had been an arrogant prick and a bully. He was used to getting what he wanted by shouting threats and spraying bullets. He'd thought he could get away with that in Los Santos - that the "little sunflowers" out West couldn't possibly be better than him. He was going to take over Los Santos the same way he had Savannah, politics be damned.

It didn’t work out that way, of course.

"So we're in this meeting listening to these dipshits run their mouths about how we’re gonna work for them now and how they have expectations and blah blah fuckin’ blah. And I'm thinking about how I can't wait for them to get shot. I'm not gonna waste the bullets on them, but someone will and I'm thinking about how funny it's going to be when that happens. Like, I kind of hope I’m there to watch. Except," he takes a breath. Geoff’s eyes had been wandering as he spoke, but now they fix on Ryan. "Except they've got this kid with them. Looks like he’s just barely out of his teens. The crew are all these Boss Hog looking kind of motherfuckers, except for the kid. He’s too skinny – but a good lookin' kid. And the rest of the crew won't shut up, but he never makes a sound. So I start watching him. And the more I watch, the more I can tell he doesn't want to be there."

Ryan remembers the meeting. Remembers all the meetings they'd had when they got to city. How with each one he was more and more certain that another crew would open fire then and there because his crew had their heads too far up their own asses to recognize how far out of their depth they were.

RT had been more patient with them than most of the other crews. Burnie and Matt clearly weren't going to take any shit from Ryan's boss and his guys, but they also didn't seem inclined to start a firefight. Actually, they looked like they were enjoying themselves. They took turns slinging insults that Ryan’s boss couldn’t keep up with, reveling in how clever they were and how dense he was.

Geoff, though.... Ryan doesn’t remember seeing him. And he certainly doesn’t remember anyone with RT taking notice of him. Then again, at that point Ryan had been too green and too scared to pay attention to anything other than obvious, immediate threats.

"The meeting finally wraps,” says Geoff. “We're walking out and I grab Burnie and tell him, hey, something's not right with the kid. I wanna go back for him. That's a thing we would do: any of us saw something looked off, someone was too beat up, maybe looked like they weren’t in by choice, we'd take them with us. But that night - " Geoff's face crumbles. He takes a couple of deep breaths and keeps talking, but his voice is thin and reedy. There are tears in his eyes. "That night the motherfucker told me 'no'." Geoff’s voice breaks over the last word. "He told me no, we're on a schedule, we need to go. There was a crew we were in talks to partner with on a big heist and we couldn’t be late for our meeting with them. Couldn’t let the deal fall through. ‘This is going to be the one that really makes us’, he said. And I felt like shit about it, but I went along, thinking, okay, fine, I'll track the kid down later. But the next goddamn day I find out all those guys from Georgia got shot to shit like 4 hours after we left. No survivors."

It’s a night Ryan doesn’t like to think about. His crew had been crashing at a busted up duplex in one of the worst neighborhoods in Los Santos. The place was a hell hole. It smelled like piss; there were blood stains on the walls; and there were rats. Herds of rats. The other guys in Ryan’s crew had taken to using them as target practice when they got bored. It was awful.

They’d been back at the duplex for a few hours when it happened. The rest of the crew were drunk – drunker than usual, which was an accomplishment in its way. Ryan had locked himself in one of the bedrooms to get away from them. He was their punching bag by default, and as a general rule the more they drank, the worse the beatings got. The lock wouldn't do much good – they'd kicked in doors to get to him before – but at least he could pretend he was safe for a little while.

Ryan was lying in bed when he heard cars pull up outside. Nothing abnormal about that, but for some reason it made his skin crawl. He sat up and looked out the window. Parked in front of the duplex were two sedans, both electric blue with gold rims. Ryan’s stomach sank. Blue and gold - the colors of one of the crews they'd met with that day. A meeting that had gone very poorly.

He watched as the other crew got out of their cars. Watched them approach the door to the duplex. Listened as his own crew's first lieutenant - the dumb fuck - let them in.

As soon he was sure they were all inside, Ryan kicked out the window screen, jumped outside, and ran. He heard the gunfire start just as he cleared the front yard.

"I was so fucking angry. I screamed at Burnie for hours. Broke a couple of his teeth, too," Geoff smirks, then his face falls again. "But I was just as pissed off at myself because I should've told him to go fuck himself. Should've just gone back and got that poor kid. That's when I decided to split from RT. No one gets to tell me when business is more important than helping someone who needs it. And if I'm listening to someone saying that, it's time to fucking go."

Ryan stays quiet. He's trying to keep his breathing even. He doesn't want to think about how things could have been different if Geoff had taken him with RT that night. It's too late; it won't do him any good. And he doesn't want to cry right now.

"And then this thing happens," Geoff continues, “where not too long after that people start taking about some crazy fucker running around in a skull mask and getting himself a reputation. Like, I think it was only a couple months after –"

"It was about a year," Ryan says quietly.

Going home wasn’t an option. He was wanted in Georgia – he was wanted in the entire tri-state area for that matter. Going home meant risking prison and Ryan couldn’t do that. He’d stayed in Los Santos in the hopes of having a fresh start and getting back to being legit. Turned out that was next to impossible in a city literally built on crime.

After months of living on the street, barely surviving on dumpster diving and petty theft, Ryan finally hit a breaking point. The last straw came when a mugger tried to take his jacket. Ryan landed a lucky punch that knocked the guy out cold. He could’ve just run after that. There are times he wishes that he had. Ryan had been desperate, though. Angry. Broken. This wasn’t the life he’d wanted. He’d been a dumb fucking college kid who took a gig as a hacker for kicks, and the next thing he knew he was getting shoved into a van at gunpoint by a redneck motherfucker who said Ryan worked for him now, and then he was robbing banks and gas stations and getting the shit kicked out of him every other day, and then they’d dragged him across the country to this terrible fucking city and he couldn’t go home and he couldn’t have a real life and he was alone and – and he was done. Ryan was done.

Ryan stood over the mugger and looked down at him. He knew he should run. Instead, he picked up a brick and crushed the man’s skull.

It was easy after that. Ryan took the mugger’s gun. The next night, he used it to shoot another mugger who had a better gun and took that one, too. Slow way to build an arsenal, but hey – it worked. Through a daisy-chain of murder and theft, Ryan got weapons, a car, enough money that he could finally afford to eat, and a sense of control he hadn’t felt in a long time.

Around Halloween he held up a drugstore. He killed the clerk and the pharmacist because they probably deserved it – by then everyone probably deserved it as far as Ryan was concerned. He emptied the register and was on his way out when a mask in one of the displays caught his eye. A skull. It seemed... appropriate. On a whim, Ryan grabbed the mask, along with some cheap face paint and hair dye. Maybe it was cheesy, maybe a little dramatic, but fuck it. Ryan wasn’t Ryan anymore; Ryan was barely a person anymore. Why should he bother to look like something he wasn’t? From that night on, whenever Ryan went out on a job, he went as the Vagabond.

Over the years, Ryan had built up the belief that it was inevitable. That the minute he entered Los Santos he was destined to become a killer; a mercenary; someone who, for the longest time, couldn’t trust or be trusted and whose heart was dead to the world. Now Geoff is telling him that’s not true. There was a chance he could have been okay.

Ryan feels sick. Geoff looks like he feels the same. There’s regret written all over his face.

They continue staring at each other silently for a moment. Geoff gets up off the desk. He crosses the room and stands in front Ryan. Another moment passes and he places his hands on either side of Ryan's face. It's a soft gesture. Comforting. Ryan leans into the touch.

"I'm glad you made it. I'm glad you're here,” Geoff says. ‘I’m so sorry’ is unspoken, but Ryan still hears it.

"Thank you," Ryan says. He hopes ‘It’s all right – it’s not your fault’ is what comes through.

Geoff pats Ryan’s cheek. He sighs.

"C'mon. Let's go make sure no one locked Gavin on the balcony or some shit."


End file.
